The best and worst Super Bowl 2018 commercials

Advertisers shelled out at least $5 million for 30 seconds of screen time during this year's Super Bowl.

But official sponsors weren't the only ones that won — one of the biggest brand winners was Crock-Pot, which didn't even have its own commercial.

Here are our picks for winners and losers of this year's Super Bowl.

1/

Winner: PepsiCo

YouTube/Doritos

After a disastrous 2017 — remember the tone-deaf Kendall Jenner ad? — Pepsi made a strong comeback with a joint ad for Mountain Dew and Doritos and another one for Pepsi.

Its 30-second commercial brought together stars from across generations, including Cindy Crawford, Britney Spears, and Michael Jackson, taking viewers on a nostalgia trip.

On the other hand, Peter Dinklage and Busta Rhymes teamed up to take on Morgan Freeman and Missy Elliot in this epic showdown between Doritos Blaze and Mountain Dew Ice.

The ads clearly touched a chord, as Pepsi had over 36,000 tweets engaging with the brand during the first half. The combo ad had over 68 million social impressions, according to iSpot.

2/

Winner: Budweiser

Thomson Reuters

Budweiser followed its powerful "Born the Hard Way" spot from last year with a philanthropic bet this year.

In this year's Super Bowl ad, the brand highlighted its charitable side, including that it has donated 79 million cans of water to disaster-relief efforts since 1988.

The effort seems to have paid off — the brand scored over 4.1 million impressions, according to iSpot.

Bud Light's "Dilly Dilly" also continued its winning streak, scoring the top honors on TVision Insights' list of the top 10 Super Bowl 2018 ads by attention.

The company's "attention index" determines how well an ad captured people's attention compared with all the other ads during the program, with an "average ad" scoring a 100. Bud Light's "Bud Knight" ad scored a 130.8.

Winner: Crock-Pot

But then it got support from the NBC show itself, with a hilarious new ad for the show featuring Milo Ventimiglia eating some chili made in — you guessed it — a Crock-Pot.

This way, Crock-Pot won the Super Bowl without spending a single dollar. Digital content engagement around Crock-Pot increased by 84% after the release of the ad, according to data crunched by Amobee.

4/

Winner: Amazon

YouTube/Amazon

Amazon's star-studded 90-second spot had people buzzing days before the big game and was an instant recipe for success.

It features a host of celebrities, including Rebel Wilson, Gordon Ramsay, Anthony Hopkins, and even Amazon's founder and CEO, Jeff Bezos. The ad has already been viewed a whopping 23 million times on YouTube.

Winner: the NFL

Manning went from being just a football player to winning the internet's hearts in a single swoop. And it got people talking as well — 99% of the sentiment around it was positive, according to iSpot.

The ad was also mentioned in tweets nearly 26,000 times between 6:30 and 10:30 p.m. on Sunday, with the sentiment being 67% positive.

6/

Winner: Quicken Loans

Quicken Loans

Keegan Michael-Key made a range of complex scenarios simple with his trademark sense of humor in this smart and punchy ad for Quicken Loans' Rocket Mortgage service, making the brand the underdog winner this year.

The audience seemed to dig it too, particularly on social media, where the brand ran custom videos explaining technical football terms — cleverly extending its $10 million TV ad buy.